Year in Review: Supporting Displaced Artists
Further reading: Engaging with the Reid Hall Community
Through the Displaced Artists Initiative, the Columbia Global Paris Center and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination supported artists who had to leave their countries of origin due to war, political oppression, or other extreme circumstances. The initiative continues in 2025–2026 with journalist Hanna Liubakova, alongside the ongoing residencies of Maha Al-Daya and Doha Kahlout.
Join us in celebrating them at the upcoming Displaced Artists Festival on September 24.
Displaced Artists in Residence
Maha Al-Daya has already made a strong impact at Reid Hall and in France. Shortly after her arrival, she met with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Institut du monde arabe. She offered him two of her embroideries as a gift and discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This spring, she held a residency at Atelier 11, presenting her series The Path of Pain—a body of work exploring Palestinian cultural heritage and displacement through traditional embroidery.
Al-Daya also participated in Art in Times of War, organized by Institute Fellow and GSAPP professor Hiba Bou Akar. The event brought together artists to discuss how cities and communities navigate post-conflict spaces, through art installations exploring identity and spatial justice. Watch the event recording.
While still stranded in Gaza in January 2025, Doha Kahlout organized her first Reid Hall event, Artmaking in Crisis, featuring performances, poetry, and a film screening. Highlights included poetry readings by Kahlout and her students, music by Bashar Murad, a reading by author Karim Kattan, and a screening of Bye Bye Tibériade with director Lina Soualem.
In June, Kahlout also participated in two panels of Palestinian poets at the Marché de la poésie in Paris. Her short story “The Road from Gaza” was published in the New York Review in July 2025, translated by former Institute fellow Yasmine Seale.
Haman Mpadire, a performance artist from Uganda, presented a public event in June. Voodoo Child, and animistic and avant-garde installation and performance, challenged an audience to be present in the Reid Hall garden.
Throughout his residency year, he also proposed dance workshops, opening Reid Hall’s spaces to performance and movement practice. Read more.
Preserving Ukrainian Music
Last year, we continued organizing concerts with the 1991 Project, the 2023–2024 project-in-residence at Reid Hall. The production of concerts, cultural, and educational events gives visibility to the Ukrainian musical repertoire, in its tight connections to European cultural traditions.
In addition to live concerts with Ukrainian musicians, including the premier Lyatoshynsky Trio and acclaimed violinist Bohdana Pivnenko, the 1991 Project and Paris Global Center partnered with the Kharkiv Opera House for several livestreams of their performances, including “Dragon Songs,” a ballet set to music by the first Ukrainian composer commissioned by the Met Opera in New York, and an opera about the life of Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, written by Zoltan Almashi. Watch recordings of the 1991 Project’s concerts at Reid Hall.
In an episode of Atelier, Anna Stavychenko, founder of the 1991 Project, described her efforts to safeguard Ukrainian musical legacy and provide refuge for displaced talents. Listen to the interview on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
In addition to organizing concerts and preserving Ukrainian sheet music, the 1991 Project with its partners—the Ukrainian Association in Finland and the Philharmonie de Paris— successfully delivered dozens of instruments to young musicians and schools in Ukraine striving to preserve their cultural heritage. Learn more about the initiative.